Strong incident reporting and learning systems are essential for building safer health care. They enable health workers to report errors, near misses and safety concerns without fear of blame, creating a culture where problems are identified early and used as opportunities for improvement.
Quality of care
Generates and provides knowledge, methods, tools, guidance, capacity-building and learning to support countries to address quality of health care and services as a function of health system performance that impacts system responsiveness and health outcomes.
The Patient Safety and Quality of Care Unit develops and provides guidance and tools to build capacity and support implementation of patient safety programmes in countries and by partners. These resources include implementation guidance, education and training materials, checklists and point-of-care practical solutions essential for strengthening health systems and reducing avoidable harm in health care.
Key topics
Education and training in patient safety are fundamental to delivering safe, high-quality health care. Embedding patient safety education throughout the learning continuum for all health workers is essential to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to prevent harm and provide reliable, person-centered care.
Launched in May 2007, the Patient Safety Solutions are standardized tools for health care professionals to prevent potential errors from reaching the patient. These interventions have demonstrated the ability to prevent or mitigate patient harm.
The High 5s project aims to facilitate the development, implementation and evaluation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) within to achieve measurable, significant and sustainable reductions in a number of challenging patient safety problems.
Planning and prioritizing effective safety interventions and policies requires a thorough understanding of the problem. Several documents have been developed for patient safety research and assessment, which are available below.
The majority of childbirth related deaths occur in low-resource settings and most could be prevented. In response to this unacceptable situation, the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist has been developed to support the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices.
Safer primary care is essential to ensuring that people receive the right care, at the right time, as close to home as possible. Considering that most health needs are addressed in primary care, improving safety at this level has a profound impact on overall health outcomes and public trust.
Every year, many millions of people undergo surgical treatment, and surgical interventions account for an estimated 13% of the world’s total disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). While surgical procedures are intended to save lives, unsafe surgical care can cause substantial harm.